November 2025
Wild Animals
Swimming with whale sharks, hearing a mountain lion, refusing to eat a snake
Sunbeams
America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration. We fundamentally have been a culture that’s been put together from the explosions of other cultures. But it’s hard for us to see. We have blinded ourselves to the reality of what our country is.
November 2025
The Golden Door
John Washington on the Case for Open Borders
Our nation’s founders attained political power by invading this land, killing most of the people who were already living in it, stealing large swaths of land from other countries, and then saying, “This is ours, and no one else can come in.” It’s hard to defend that moral claim.
The Childless Aunt
Though a faint hope that I might yet conceive continued to smolder in the back of my mind, at some point it dawned on me that none of these joys and trials I wished for myself were exclusive to biological parents. I could love any child who needed me.
Considerable Luck
In the weeks before my surgery I wandered parks and refuges where black-crowned night herons clung to cattails, pied-billed grebes fished ponds, and raucous crows cawed and flew upwind to find branches where they could shelter together. They would aim for a tree, fail to settle as a flock, then fall back and regroup to try again. Like the crows, I wouldn’t quit.
Her Mother's Suitcase
That night she dreamed about her mother and the darkening spot on her ceiling and the water collecting in a fetid puddle in the middle of her living room carpet.
A Thousand Words
A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
One Landscape Divided
President Trump’s increased militarization of the US border with Mexico is certainly a step beyond those taken by the past few administrations—and in line with the family-separation policies the first Trump White House deployed. But the detainment of people fleeing violence, poverty, and persecution is not unique to this moment.
The Lonesomest Sound in the World
When the kids came to school, we tortured them because they smelled and wore the same clothes every day, until they just shut down, not even looking at us after a while, never raising their hands, never saying a word.
Selected Poems
I know now, / having woken / and climbed away from you / in the chill / that I can do it. / Cast a spell / on my body.
